A Rigged Twist of Fate

Suicidal Tendencies

23

JAN/12

Unmasking the mole is easier than expected as it turns out that one of Yuliya’s oldest friend was selling intel to the Titans.
It looks like Scions can take a break but the LVPD Detective Houston phones Elizabeth as she’s leaving for Texas to ask if she can check up on his sister Rachel, a rookie journalist holed up in Blackwater, Washington. According to the detective, she hasn’t called him for three days and last he heard from her she was going to write an article about Blackwater’s forests, where many would commit suicide over the years.

The small town is not far from the Canadian border. The Scions drive to Blackwater, something straight out of a Twin Peaks-kind of setting. They meet with the local sheriff and learn that the forests are in fact ridden with the corpses of suicides: people from all over the USA have chosen Blackwater to be their resting ground. Rachel Houston, however, literally vanished three days before. As long as the Scions won’t cause any trouble, the Sheriff is more than happy to have some backup for the investigation.
Somebody has sneaked into Rachel’s place; her PC’s hard disk is missing, as well as some of her notes. The only clue seems to be the “Held Hand”, a group of volunteers who try to dissuade suicides from their intent. Some further information is then gathered at the diner’s: one of its employes tried to commit suicide but was saved before choking on the rope. The very same thing happened to another boy, now recovering at the hospital. The waitress also says that the Held Hand didn’t really try to save her: they suggested where to commit suicide. Rachel Houston was last seen chatting with one of the Held Hand, whose symbol is a triskelion. She wanted to get an interview but the man refused.
The Scions rent some rooms at the motel but as they prepare to sleep a gloomy and eerie atmosphere falls onto the place. Ghosts with ropes around their necks try to sedate and kill the PCs. The motel’s owner is found dead, hanged, inside his office. The Scions start to think that not all suicides are what they seem: it looks like something is causing the deaths, passing them off as suicides. Unsurprisingly, a trail leads them to the forest. They find another suicide, a hicker from another state; judging from her stuff, the girl had no intention whatsoever to kill herself, thus strengthening the PCs’ theory.
A Lodge deep in the woods is the Held Hand’s base. There are only five of them and they switch from friendly to hostile as the Scions’ questions address their involvement in the deaths. One of the them snaps and slips a paper to Jake, telling the PCs to meet him where they found the hicker’s body. The man shows up as promised. The Held Hand started off good: they really were volunteers whose task was to search through the woods to save suicides and talk them out of that. Their present boss Sara changed everything: they took on actively seeking suicides to encourage them. Before dishing out anything else, a sniper takes out the man. Elizabeth and Reiko dash to the lodge, hoping to find Sara. Instead they clash with a warped, gigantic man. After dispatching of him they realize the lodge is now empty. Sara left behind a diary, though, which confirms the Scions’ suspects: she’s feeding “the Beast” with the souls of the dead and it is soon to be awakened.
An army of ghosts sorround the lodge. They are far too many for the PCs to fight; Elizabeth figures out that the Held Hand must have a way to walk among the ghosts unharmed and suggests to wear the men’s triskelions. The symbols are actually a ward against the ghosts so they can track Sara’s scent to a lake far into the forest. Chained in the middle of it, in a puddle of jet black liquid, is a Nymph. There is also Rachel’s dead body on the bank. The Nymph was supposed to protect the forest but failed when Sara decided to free the Beast, a Titanspawn resting beneath the lake. Elizabeth summons up her Valor: after all, the nymph was trying to protect something so their Virtues must not be very different. Her Valor is strong enough to snap one of the chains, weakening the influence of the Beast over the Nymph. For the forest to come back to life there is only one way though: Jake must take part into an act of love (literally) with the Nymph to ignite new life. Jake, not wholly unhappy about that, agrees but he ends up disembodied, fighting the Titanspawn’s corruption in the form of a wicked clone of himself. He overcomes his dark side but when he comes back to the physical world he has switched places with the Nymph, who’s now free. Kayleen breaks a chain with her raw strength but it is not enough to free the Scion: Jake is now running on the Titans’ Virtues and they must be replaced. Again, Elizabeth musters her Conviction Virtue to shatter the bindings and make sure that the Titanspawn beneath the lake will never wake up.
The Nymph disappears. The woods seem alive, now. The gloom and the despair are gone. What’s left of the Nymph is a jewel. The Scions take Rachel’s body and prepare to tell detective Houston about her death but the jewel, when in proximity of the corpse, shines for a moment and the girl wakes up as from a bad dream – a parting gift from the Nymph, it seems.
In Blackwater, the Scions tell a much less enticing version of their story: thanks to the diary, the Sheriff can now formally accuse the Held Hand. Sara and her minions are gone; maybe one day they’ll cross path with the Scions.
A deserved break is yet to come for them: they managed to slow Fenrir’s awakening again but they’re still far from victory.